Partnership seeks to raise $4 million to scale-up wraparound service offerings, ensure individuals experiencing homelessness have tools for success
Today marks the launch of the Housing to Recovery Fund, a new funding model that will seek to raise $4 million for services to help sustain permanent housing, with the ultimate goal of ending chronic homelessness in Indianapolis. The funds will be directed at supportive services including initial outreach and engagement, housing navigation, assistance with obtaining benefits, landlord negotiation, and help with daily living skills.
Mayor Joe Hogsett joined Brian Payne, president and CEO of Central Indiana Community Foundation (CICF), City County-Councillor Vop Osili, and Chelsea Haring-Cozzi with the Coalition for Homelessness Intervention and Prevention (CHIP) to launch the fund.
“In 2017, I challenged our City to locate 400 additional units to house those experiencing homelessness. As always, our city rose to the challenge,” said Mayor Hogsett. “And so today we outline the Housing to Recovery Fund to bolster supportive services for these units. With this permanent supportive housing model, when our neighbors are housed, they will be more likely to stay housed, stay out of emergency care, and regain their self-sufficiency.”
The Housing to Recovery Fund will employ a pay-for-success model and bring together government, philanthropic organizations, and service providers to invest in sustainable solutions that support the pipeline to housing. The funds will be directed at supportive wraparound services that break down barriers to stability in order to help individuals obtain and sustain tenancy. A series of metrics will be used to ensure the funded services:
- increase housing stability
- drive down involvement with the criminal justice system
- provide better access to healthcare
“In 2017, I challenged our City to locate 400 additional units to house those experiencing homelessness. As always, our city rose to the challenge.”
The $4 million fund will support high quality services for persons experiencing homelessness who have high barriers to stability as they are linked to housing and rental assistance identified through ongoing efforts. Housing transition services such as initial outreach, tenancy sustaining services such as peer supports and recovery specialists, as well as housing-related public-private partnership efforts are among the fund’s target services. CICF and the City will work to establish the grantmaking criteria, requirements and guidelines, and administer the application, review and awarding processes. CICF will house and manage the funds.
“We are partnering with Mayor Hogsett on this Housing to Recovery Fund by doing the things we do best. We connect people, ideas and resources to community needs and opportunities. We help change systems and empower people in order to close financial and societal disparities – especially when race plays a major role. We create and implement effective grantmaking processes that are focused on results and outcomes. And, we build organizational capacity in our frontline not-for-profit organizations,” said Brian Payne, president and CEO of CICF.
This fund comes in response to Mayor Hogsett’s challenge to identify 400 units of supportive housing, issued in his 2017 State of the City address. This challenge brought together a group from CICF, the City, and the Blueprint Council’s Planning and Investment Committee. The group explored solutions to the significant lack of service provider capacity that was identified as the additional units were developed. Staff from the Corporation for Supportive Housing (CSH), with a local office in Indianapolis, facilitated conversations on how the City could explore, design, and launch an outcome-based funding model for supportive housing services aligned with housing and rental assistance.
“We help change systems and empower people in order to close financial and societal disparities – especially when race plays a major role.”
Over the last three years, the City has taken significant steps to improve the collaboration of community partners and expand resources available to individuals experiencing homelessness, helping to lay the foundation for the 5-Year Plan to End Homelessness in Indianapolis that was announced last year. This new funding model will leverage key strategies outlined in the 5-Year Plan.
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